While images of China beam out from an advertising screen in New York's Times Square, individual Chinese cities are also busy promoting themselves.

They are using whatever media outlets they can, from television, through websites and even on airplane screens.

The publicity shots were initially created to boost tourism and to show beautiful landscapes and places of cultural or historical interest. They were originally only shown to domestic audiences on China Central Television (CCTV). Now they are going global and expanding their remit to cover invitations to invest.

Soon after authorities in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province, released an overseas version of an advertising video in December on the United States Cable News Network (CNN), Hangzhou, the capital of East China's Zhejiang province, took its first step in its Europe-oriented city marketing strategy with a video of its own. The video was first broadcast by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) on Feb 21, and is scheduled to finish by the end of June. It is aimed at attracting overseas tourists.

Hangzhou city government invested 10 million yuan ($1.52 million) in its Europe-oriented city marketing strategy, a significant increase from last year, said Pan Dan, an official in charge of the whole program in the marketing department of Hangzhou tourism commission.

The number of tourists from Europe reached 10,900 in January with a year-on-year growth of 14.5 percent, said Pan.

In 2010, the city's tourism industry grossed 102.57 billion yuan in revenue, up 27.7 percent year-on-year, according to the Hangzhou tourism bureau.

Pan also said that although they had broadcast several advertising video overseas in the past, this year's strategy is the largest in scale because it also includes some concrete activities with local travel agencies in Germany, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, countries that contribute most to Hangzhou's tourism growth from the European market.

Other cities are also getting in on the game.

"We began putting our city image video on CCTV as early as 2003. In addition to our city's tourist attractions, we also showed scenes of urban construction," said Yang Jin, divison director of the information office in Ningbo, Zhejiang province.

"We did benefit from the video. Once our mayor went to South Africa to woo investors and his counterpart there told him that he had watched our video and was impressed with it."